hem as they waited breathlessly for results.

"They're dismounted, and waiting for daylight," she said. "We must
ride around them."

They were leaving the road, the low brush rasping harshly on their
stirrups--as loud as a bugle-call, it seemed to Frances--when a dash
of hoofs from ahead told that a detachment was coming to investigate.
Now there came a hail. Frances stopped; Banjo behind her whispered to
know what they should do.

"Keep that little fool horse still!" she said.

Now the patrol, which had stopped to hail, was coming on again.
Banjo's horse was not to be sequestered, nor his craving for
companionship in that lonesome night suppressed. He lifted his shrill
nicker again, and a shot from the outriders of cavalry was the
answer.

"Answer them, tell them who you are Banjo--they all know you--and I'll
slip away. Good-bye, and thank you for your brave help!"

"I'll go with you, they'll hear one as much as they'll hear two."

"No, no, you can help me much better by doing as I tell you. Tell them
that a led horse got away from you, and that's the noise of it running
away."

She waited for no more words, for the patrol was very near, and now
and then one of them fired as he rode. Banjo yelled to them.

"Say, you fellers! Stop that fool shootin' around here, I tell you!"

"Who are you?" came the answer.

"Banjo, you darned fool! And I tell you right now, pardner, the first
man that busts my fiddle with a bullet'll have to mix with me!"

The soldiers came up laughing, and heard Banjo's explanation of the
horse, still dimly heard, galloping off. Frances stopped to listen.
Presently she heard them coming on again, evidently not entirely
satisfied with Banjo's story. But the parley with him had delayed
them; she had a good lead now.

In a little swale, where the greasewood reached above her head, she
stopped again to listen. She heard the troopers beating the bushes
away off to one side, and knew that they soon would give it up. When
they passed out of her hearing, she rode on, slowly, and with
caution.

She was frontiersman enough to keep her direction by the north
star--Colonel Landcraft had seen to that particular of her education
himself--but Polaris would not tell her which way to go to find Alan
Macdonald and his dusty men standing their vigil over their cooped-up
enemies. Nothing but luck, she knew, could lead her there, for she was
in a sea of sage-brush, with the black river valley behind her,